Cradle Lake (14 page)

Owen's reflection in the lake dispersed into fragments of dust—

“I want to wake—”

Hands against his back propelled him forward. He crashed through the surface of the lake as if smashing through glass—

(there are ghosts here this is a haunted place)

—and sat up in bed, naked and sweating. His heartbeat was so furious it was painful. He raised his hands to his face and could see, even in the dimness of predawn, there was no blood on them.

While his breathing slowed, he eased beneath the blankets and curled himself around Heather, sliding an arm
between her belly and the push of her breasts. He was shaking all over, his bones rattling like an old shopping cart. Pushing his face into her hair, he forced his eyes to close and waited for his breathing to regain some semblance of normalcy.

Alan awoke on the third day, and it was like Christ rising from the dead. His illness had vacated his body like a spirit. Muscles rubbery, eyes nearly blind and squinting, he was an infant shuttled straight from the womb.

Heather was watching television in the living room, the sound turned down so low it was barely audible. For a long time, Alan stared at the back of her head. He recalled the fever dream, where she cradled one of those filthy buzzards like a newborn baby against her breast. How it shat steaming black ribbons onto her arm, scorching the flesh.

He shuddered at the memory.

Heather turned and stared at him. She was gaunt, hollowed, a wax impression of herself. She'd been steadily losing weight, too, and that frightened him. He had caught sight of her recently coming out of the shower, the twin blades of her shoulders like the plates of a stegosaurus poking through the taut white flesh. The bones of her hips had reminded him of spearheads, of bull horns.

“How are you feeling?” he asked her.

“I should be asking you.”

“I'm okay.”

“You've had a bad fever. You've talked nonsense every night in your sleep.”

“Did I?”

“About birds. About your father.” She frowned, and at least it was an expression. “Strange.”

“Is there any coffee?”

“Some.” She turned back to the television. “Oh,” she called before he turned away, “I almost forgot. The sheriff came around looking for you the other day. I told him you were sick, and he left his business card. He said to call him when you felt better.”

The news jarred him. Vaguely, he recalled pressing his hands against the bedroom window and peering out at Sheriff Landry as he stood in the yard. At the time he'd thought it had been a dream, but apparently it had actually happened.

“Did he say what he wanted?”

“No. I put the card on the refrigerator.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

In the kitchen he poured himself a cup of coffee from the cold pot, then reheated it in the microwave. Sure enough, Sheriff Landry's card was stuck to the refrigerator with a Garfield magnet.

In the intervening days since his conversation with Hank, Alan had done an impressive job convincing himself that what had been happening here in town—the Morris kid, Catherine's miraculous rebound from leukemia,
Owen Moreland—could be summed up by a simple series of coincidences. Sure, they were bizarre even as individual occurrences, and when they were all put together … well, it seemed more than strange. But the Morris kid's neck
hadn't
been broken; Catherine had simply beaten childhood leukemia; and Owen Moreland had found that his wife was banging another man so he killed them and then himself. Those things happened all the time. There was no need to attribute them to the power of some ancient Indian legend …

And what about Heather recognizing the photo of Owen Moreland as the man she thought was a barefoot hunter standing in the yard?
a needling voice would occasionally prompt.
And how do you explain how quickly that cut healed on your face, Alan? How do you explain those things?

He couldn't explain them.

He chose not to think about them.

Jesus Christ.

The vine, thick as a grown man's finger, was back, crawling up the wall from behind the refrigerator. The evening after Cory Morris had been taken down to the lake, Alan had pulled the refrigerator away from the wall and cut the vine out. The damn thing had been growing straight up through the floor, in the separation between the floor tiles and the molding, and clung to the drywall by a mucus-like coating. There had been the second vine that had looped around the coils at the back of the refrigerator, and Alan had cut that away, too. Now, seeing the enormous vine crawling up the wall so soon after cutting it away caused a cold spear to puncture his heart.

How did you grow back so quickly, you bastard?

The microwave beeped, startling him.

Alan went to the refrigerator and gripped it on either side. Jockeying it back and forth, he was able to pull it away from the wall several inches … but then it stopped. He squeezed alongside it and peered behind the refrigerator.

He counted seven separate vines, each one about the diameter of a pencil, branching off from the main stalk and curling around the coiled grate at the back of the refrigerator. They were taut, preventing the refrigerator from being pulled any farther away from the wall.

“Son of a bitch.”

He bent and reached behind the unit, grabbed one of the vines, tugged at it. The fucker was strong and did not break. Moreover, his hand came away tacky with mucus. In all his life he'd never seen vines like these.

There were scissors in one of the kitchen drawers. He retrieved them and returned to the rear of the refrigerator. He pressed himself up against the wall and reached behind the refrigerator with the scissors. He snipped one of the vines with some difficulty, and the thing snapped and recoiled, one half retreating beneath the floor while the other half disappeared into the grillwork at the back of the refrigerator.

Dark purple, viscous fluid splashed the linoleum. Like blood.

Alan jerked his hand back, dropping the scissors as he did so. The scissors clattered to the floor and slid under the refrigerator.

“Perfect.”

He felt like an utter fool.

Hesitantly, he reached behind the refrigerator and
pressed two fingers to the splotch of purplish fluid that had bled from the vine.

No way. Could it be?

It felt warm.

Again, he withdrew his arm as a cold wave passed through him. He got up and grabbed a butcher knife from the wooden block on the counter, then dipped back beside the refrigerator. He spent the next minute and a half sawing through the remaining six vines. Each one bled the same strange fluid and recoiled just as the first one had. By the time he finished, there was a sizable, blood-hued puddle on the floor behind the unit.

The microwave beeped again, reminding him his coffee was still inside.

He stood and gathered some paper towels, which he used to wipe the fluid off the floor.

All of it … warm …

Then he balled up the used paper towels and stashed them at the bottom of the trash can. After pushing the refrigerator back into place, he retrieved his coffee from the microwave and opened the refrigerator for the milk.

He dropped his mug on the floor, spilling the coffee and breaking off the handle.

The vines had grown straight through the back of the refrigerator, the greenish tentacles encircling the half-gallon jug of milk, a bottle of ketchup, a plate of chicken, a container of orange juice, various other items. One of the vines curled down to the bottom shelf and actually held a banana suspended in midair. It was like looking at some tropical, carnivorous plant.

Alan staggered back, skidding in the spilled coffee and
nearly spilling himself to the floor. If Heather had heard him drop the coffee mug from the living room, she didn't bother to come see what the commotion was all about.

He quickly cleaned up the coffee and the broken bits of mug, tossed them in the trash, then turned to address the vines inside the refrigerator with the same knife he'd used to cut them away from the back of the unit. However, after a moment of consideration, he realized he didn't want to leave any of that food in there, so he gathered the items, vines and all, and dumped everything into the trash. Dark purple fluid, tacky as syrup, had congealed on the top shelf. He wiped it down with a dishcloth, which he also tossed into the trash. Then, upon further consideration, he tied the trash bag and took it out to the curb.

The sheriff's cruiser was parked across the street.

“Looks like you're feeling better.” Hearn Landry crossed the street, hitching up his gun belt in the most stereotypical of manners. “Heard you were a tad under the weather.”

“Oh,” said Alan. “Hello.”

Landry tipped his hat back. “Is today trash day?”

Alan ignored the question. “My wife said you came by to see me the other day.”

“Sweet little thing, your wife,” Landry said. Though he probably meant nothing by it, he exuded a lecherous undercurrent that made Alan want to take a swing at him. “She been sick, too?”

Alan felt his left eyelid twitch. “No.”

“Didn't catch your bug, did she?” Landry grinned, showing Alan all his teeth.

“Was there something you needed, Sheriff?”

Landry spat a brown gob onto the pavement. “You're Phillip's nephew, ain't that right?”

“I was. Up until he died.”

“Took some kind of teaching position at the community college?”

“I teach English lit.”

Sheriff Landry made a noise back in his throat that suggested he didn't think too highly of English literature. Alan didn't think the sheriff would know English lit if it bit him in the ass.

“My kid Bart's going there in the fall,” Landry said, rubbing his squared-off jaw with one meaty paw. “Kid's as dumb as a brick shit house. He gets that from his mother.”

Alan laughed. He couldn't help it. “Christ. Please don't tell me you came here to ensure your son's successful completion of my class.”

“Huh? What?” Landry looked genuinely surprised. “Hell, no. I don't give a shit if that little bucket head fails out or becomes the goddamn dean of admissions. I was just making small talk with you, that's all. That ain't why I'm here.”

“Then why are you here?”

“To make sure we got an understanding.”

“What understanding is that?”

Grinning, Sheriff Landry snorted and held both his hands out in an imitation of surrender. He spat a second gob onto the pavement where it nearly sizzled in the heat. “I
don't wanna play any games. I ain't big on games, Professor. You spoke with that fella Gerski across the street?” Landry jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the vicinity of Hank's house.

“Is this about the lake? Yeah, we talked.” Thinking:
Jesus holy Christ, this whole goddamn town has shit the bed. What a bunch of lunatics.

“He set you straight?” Landry said.

Alan frowned. “Straight?”

Landry took an imposing step forward. “You saw something that day with the Morris kid. Maybe you shouldn't have seen it, but you did, and what's done is done. We got a pretty nice town here—peaceful, a great place to raise a family—and I get bitter thinking about new folks coming into town and ruining that for the rest of us. You get what I'm saying?”

“Listen, Hank Gerski told me everything. I get it; I understand. Frankly, I think you people are fucking nuts, but that's your problem.” Alan shoved his hands into his pockets and felt like an obstinate child. “No, I won't go near your precious lake. But you gotta make me a promise, too.”

“Hmm. What's that?”

“That you quit spying on my fucking house. Creeps me out.”

At first, Landry didn't react. Then, astoundingly, a wide grin nearly split his face in half. He looked like he had a comb stuck in his mouth. “Well, hell,” he practically crooned. “That's all I wanted to hear.” He tipped his hat and readjusted his belt. “You and your pretty wife have a good day now, okay?”

Without waiting for a response, Landry turned and
sauntered back to his car. He climbed inside with a huff and slowly rolled down the street. The son of a bitch even bleated his horn twice and waved as he went by.

Later that night, wide awake in bed and staring at the rectangle of moonlight on the far wall, Alan could not find sleep. Something was stirring in the back of his mind, something he couldn't quite put his finger on. Fleeting and unresolved, like glimpsing the tail end of a snake before it disappears down a hole in the ground …

Outside, bare branches clawed against the window-pane. He saw—or imagined he saw—something large arc past the panel of moonlight. He was reminded of his dream from the night before, following his father—or had it been Owen Moreland?—through the woods and how the buzzards melted and dripped from the trees. Here in the dark and supposed safety of his bedroom, Landry's warning reverberated in his head. Alan peeled his gaze from the window.

Landry…

He sat up in bed and swung his legs to the floor, prodded once again by the glimpse of that snake sliding down the hole. Without turning on any lights, he walked to the bathroom. A laundry hamper stood beneath the towel rack.

Landry's visit wasn't a dream. What else—

(you're not sleeping)

—wasn't a dream?

The hamper was filled with clothes. He scavenged past the top layer and dug around near the bottom. After a moment his fingers closed upon a heavy, balled-up bit of
material. He felt his bowels clench. Like a fisherman reeling in a catch, he pulled the clothing out of the hamper, flashes of memory returning to him now—

(you're not sleeping)

—and knew what this article of clothing was before he actually saw it: his pajama pants. The ones he had been wearing in the dream where he pursued his father's corpse to the lake.